11 Un-Canceled TV Shows

07.19.13 8:45 AM ET

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Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz confirmed that a movie based on the series is in the works—and that there will be a fourth season, five years after its cancellation. From Diff’rent Strokes to Scrubs, see which other shows found second lives on other networks.

Sam Urdank, FOX / AP Photo

Arrested Development

Emmy-winning but ratings-allergic Arrested Development was canceled by Fox in 2006, and fans of the series waited with bated breath for Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Portia de Rossi, and the rest of the ensemble cast to reprise their roles as members of one of TV’s most dysfunctional families, the Bluths. Their wish was granted when the show returned in May with 15 new episodes shown exclusively on Netflix. Despite mixed reactions to the fourth season, the show received three Emmy nominations and has a feature film in development.

Jojo Whilden/CBS

Unforgettable

Unforgettable is proof that a show can get canceled even after pulling in viewers. The CBS crime drama got the axe in 2012 after one season despite averaging 12.1 million viewers per episode. However, the network changed its mind and renewed the show a few months later. Series lead Poppy Montgomery didn’t believe CBS when she first heard the news. “I thought it was a joke. I thought it was a gag because I’ve never heard of a show getting uncanceled,” she said. The 13-episode second season premieres July 28.

Patrick Wymore/CW,Patrick Wymore

Whose Line Is It Anyway?

The Drew Carey–hosted improv comedy show originally aired on ABC from 1998 to 2004 before it was canceled, although ABC Family continued to show unaired episodes until 2007. The CW announced this year that it was reviving Whose Line? for a 10-episode run this summer. Returning cast members Wayne Brady, Colin Mochrie, and Ryan Stiles, along with new host Aisha Tyler, pulled strong ratings in the ninth-season premiere on July 16.

FOX

Family Guy

Controversial content and dipping ratings plagued Family Guy’s first three seasons on Fox from 1999 to 2002. But successful DVD releases, including three Star Wars parodies, showed network executives that there was still a market to be tapped. In 2003 USA Today reported, “As many as 35 new episodes could return in January 2005, marking the first time that a canceled series has been revived based on strong DVD demand and ratings in syndication.” Indeed, in the summer of 2005, Family Guy returned to Fox’s Sunday lineup, where it remains to this day.

NBC

Friday Night Lights

Troubled, beautiful people playing football, drinking, and cheerleading sounds like a hit. But despite a seemingly great formula (and critical acclaim), NBC’s Friday Night Lights was not a ratings winner. The show failed to bring in big audiences in its first two seasons, and then NBC struck a deal with DirecTV, in which the next three seasons would air first on DirecTV’s The 101 Network before being rebroadcast on NBC. “It is a painful reminder of the pressure that television shows face today to pull audience numbers at all costs, often regardless of the creative fallout. Fortunately, while the show has a small viewership, its fans are rabidly loyal ones,” wrote The Daily Beast’s Jace Lacob. “Which might be just what DirecTV recognized when it saved the series at the end of Season 2 with a revolutionary last-minute deal, giving the show a reprieve from cancellation. That deal—and a subsequent one for the fourth and fifth seasons—was a game-changer not only for the television business … but for the show itself.” Though the series has since come to an end on both The 101 Network and NBC, fans were happy to see Kyle Chandler, who played the beloved Coach Taylor, take home a better-late-than-never Emmy in 2011.

Ron Tom / ABC

All My Children

After more than 40 years, All My Children finished its television run in September 2011. But a production company called Prospect Park announced shortly after that it was taking over the soap and giving it a new life through its Internet channel, The Online Network. The show finally returned with new episodes in April, although production was temporarily halted in June because of a labor dispute. In addition to being shown online, the series is airing on Oprah Winfrey’s cable network OWN for 10 weeks this summer, along with One Life to Live.

Futurama / 20th Century Fox Film Corporation

Futurama

Like Family Guy before it, Fox canceled animated sci-fi series Futurama while it was still in its prime. As the brainchild of David X. Cohen and Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, Futurama focuses on a motley crew of humans, aliens, and an alcoholic robot working for a space delivery service in the 31st century. Futurama aired on Fox from 1999 to 2003, before Cartoon Network began airing it in syndication in 2005. In 2007, the show reemerged in four straight-to-DVD films, which were chopped down into episodes that aired on Comedy Central. “The continued devotion of the fans, chiefly on the Internet, kept us thinking that maybe we could bring this back,” Groening told AOL TV. And they did. In June 2009, 20th Century Fox announced that Comedy Central had picked up the show for 26 new half-hour episodes and, after negotiations, the entire original voice cast signed on for the new episodes. New episodes of Futurama began airing on June 24, 2010, on Comedy Central, helping the network earn its highest ratings of the year. The show was then renewed for another 26-episode seventh season before it was canceled in April. The series finale will air September 4.

Everett Collection

Taxi

Throughout its four seasons on ABC, Taxi, which followed a group of New York City cab drivers and their abusive dispatcher, earned 13 Emmy awards. The series—which starred Tony Danza, Danny DeVito, Judd Hirsch, Christopher Lloyd, and the late Andy Kaufman—earned critical acclaim. It was a ratings success from 1978 to 1980, but then started to dwindle. ABC decided to cancel Taxi, but NBC picked it up and gave it another shot with its fifth and final season.

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Scrubs

NBC’s quirky comedy about the fictional teaching hospital Sacred Heart premiered in 2001. With the right mix of wit, love stories, and gallows humor, Scrubs aired for six solid seasons on NBC. In 2006, the seriestook home a Peabody Award “for fearlessly smashing traditional comic formulas, all the while respecting the deepest emotional and moral issues of its life-and-death setting.” But in 2007, during Scrubs’sseventh season, NBC announced that it would not renew the show. Shortly after the Season 7 finale, however, ABC announced that it had picked up Scrubs for an eighth season and wound up adding a ninth as well, but with new cast members. “There’s a freedom when you’re on a network that’s promoting you and being supportive, and you know you’re going to get to end the show the way you want to,” Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence told The Daily Beast. But in May 2010, just before the Season 9 finale aired, it was announced that Scrubs was officially canceled by ABC.

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Damages

Legal thriller Damages, starring Emmy-winner Glenn Close and Emmy-nominee Rose Byrne, premiered on FX in 2007. The series centers on the complicated relationship between a shark lawyer (Close) and her protégée (Byrne). After the third-season finale, co-creator Todd A. Kessler told The Daily Beast’s Jace Lacob: “We have every confidence that, if there is the possibility of there being a fourth season, there will be ... If it’s not possible, then we’re very proud of the work that we’ve been able to do these past three seasons.” A few months later, in July 2010, it was announced that DirecTV had picked up Damages for two more seasons, consisting of 10 episodes each, to air on their Audience Network. “In terms of content and show length, not having to deal with commercials and all that, it gives us a whole new way to tell stories,” Glenn Kessler, co-creator and Todd’s older brother, told The Hollywood Reporter. The show ended after the fifth season finale aired in September 2012.

The Game

The dating lives of football players sounds like the plot of a reality show. But The Game, a spinoff of UPN hit Girlfriends, is actually a sitcom that premiered on the CW in 2006. In its third season on the CW, The Game, produced by Frasier star Kelsey Grammer, was bringing in only 1.9 million viewers an episode, and CW axed it. BET picked up The Game and relocated taping from Los Angeles to Atlanta. The Game returned to the air for a fourth season on January 11, 2011, with a record 7.7 million viewers, more than tripling its ratings. It was the most-watched sitcom ever on cable television, according to The New York Times. “This is really the top of the mountain in terms of what I’ve been trying to accomplish and what I knew BET could do,” Debra L. Lee, chief executive of BET Networks, told the Times.The Game has experienced continued success and was renewed for a seventh season in April.

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Diff'rent Strokes

It may take Diff’rent Strokes to move the world, as the show’s theme song explains, but there was some network movement needed, too. Diff’rent Strokes followed upper-crusty Philip Drummond—who adopts two black children—and made “Watchu talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” a household phrase. The vehicle for Gary Coleman’s super-child stardom originally ran on NBC from 1978 to 1985 before moving to ABC for its eighth and final season.

Doug Hyun / TNT

Southland

As if Benjamin McKenzie wasn’t violent enough as Ryan Atwood on The O.C.,Southland gave him a gun to play rookie officer Ben Sherman. The cop drama premiered on NBC in April 2009. Though Southland was originally picked up for a second season, NBC eventually axed the LAPD series. A month later, TNT picked up the show and began airing it in January 2010. “The qualities that originally distinguished our show from other stuff were cablelike qualities—in terms of language, an in-depth look at characters, no easy resolutions,” executive producer Ann Biderman told the New York Daily News. “The move to cable is a natural fit.” Seemingly, it was. TNT picked up Southland for three additional seasons before canceling it in May.